In recent years, industrial personal computers have become increasingly prevalent in many industries. It is not uncommon today to see installations with rows of industrial PCs arranged in racks. While many of these industrial PCs are often designed and manufactured to higher standards than consumer PCs, they still are occasionally in need of repair and down time can be expensive and problematic for many industrial PC users. Consequently, users of industrial PCs will often desire to monitor the interior and exterior environments of such PCs. Monitoring the PCs can help to predict, postpone, and eliminate some industrial PC failures. Remote environmental monitoring, via an xe2x80x9cout-of-bandxe2x80x9d environmental monitor disposed in the industrial PC, can be most beneficial with geographically dispersed computer networks. Such remote monitoring has been successfully performed with prior art monitors. Additionally, some of these xe2x80x9cout-of-bandxe2x80x9d environmental monitors have even been enhanced to permit shutting down the Windows NT operating system on the remotely located industrial PC.
While these function enhanced alarm cards have been used extensively in the past, they do have some drawbacks. First of all, their functionality has been primarily limited to monitoring of preset environmental conditions. Typically, these preset environmental conditions are established at the time the industrial PC or the alarm card, or both, are initially configured for operation. However, over time, the desires of an industrial PC administrator may change. When this occurs, it is then necessary to change the preset configurations. Often, it is difficult to change the parameters being monitored. Typically, the host PC would need to be opened, the alarm card would need to be removed and replaced, or at least reconfigured. It has often been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reconfigure the monitored parameters of an industrial PC from a remote administration facility. Secondly, when the main microprocessor for the industrial PC failed, crashed, or otherwise hung up, it was then nearly impossible to determine information about the reason for the crash if such information was dependent, in some way, upon that main microprocessor for reporting, etc.
Consequently, there exists a need for improved methods and systems for monitoring and extending the monitoring capabilities of a monitor for an industrial PC.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for extending, in an efficient manner, the functionality of an alarm card in an industrial personal computer.
It is a feature of the present invention to utilize a microserver, disposed in the alarm card for retrieving from the host industrial PC, web-enabled content.
It is another feature of the present invention to include a direct connection between the alarm card and the host CPU, via a well-known data link scheme.
It is another feature of the present invention to include on the host computer an agent which communicates with the microserver.
It is yet another feature of the present invention to include a user configurable software scheme, disposed on the host computer, for changing parameters to be monitored by the alarm card.
It is an advantage of the present invention to achieve improved efficiency in enhancing the functionality of environmental monitoring functions in industrial personal computers.
It is another advantage of the present invention to provide an alarm card with enhanced capabilities.
The present invention is an apparatus and method for enhancing the functionality of alarm cards in industrial personal computers designed to satisfy the aforementioned needs, provide the previously stated objects, include the above-listed features, and achieve the already articulated advantages. The present invention is carried out in a xe2x80x9ctechnician-lessxe2x80x9d manner in a sense that the time consumed by a technician with opening the case for enhancing or changing the functionality of a monitor of an industrial PC, has been greatly reduced, if not eliminated, in certain circumstances.
Accordingly, the present invention is a system and method including a microserver disposed on an alarm card, the microserver for accessing web-enabled information on the host computer.